


Three Apples and a Salt Shaker

by mezzosaka



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Magic Tricks, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 13:44:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19319389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mezzosaka/pseuds/mezzosaka
Summary: Summer here felt like yellow, like the burning in your eyes after you finally look away from your video game, like the warm, pitch-black nights filled with walks down to the gas station to buy the biggest soda they carried. Summer here felt like blue, like walking through the aisles of Junes just to savor the air conditioning, like sucking on a popsicle and feeling your mouth fill wih cherry.Summer here felt like magic, like sitting in the food court and showing your friend a magic trick and realizing that you are, in fact, kind of in love with him.





	Three Apples and a Salt Shaker

**Author's Note:**

> what's up, gamers!!! welcome back to my ao3!! in this fic, i'll be telling you exactly how souji and yosuke became a Thing, and this is actually special dlc you have to unlock. all of this actually happens if you press down, up, x, circle, square, down, up, up, start, and select while catching the legendary fish, and you also have to spin around three times and slap yourself with a chunk of salmon. just trust me on this one.
> 
> please enjoy! this one goes out to TGDP, you know who you are. i am holding teddie as i post this fic, and it's all thanks to you guys.
> 
> also: happy birthday, yosuke!

Summers were pretty boring out in Inaba.

Aside from the whole “keeping the peace, stomping out murderers, exploring the TV world” business they had going on, summers really were  _ boring  _ compared to back in the city. The days were long, but not very many new things to do cropped up. It was just the same old stuff and, despite how many new friends Souji had made… Well, passing the time was a whole lot easier when you could have breakfast at a quaint little cafe, take a train miles away just to pop into the arcade in the afternoon, and be right back home before it was too dark out.

Out here, kids typically wandered up and down the same old streets until the sun began to set. And when they got bored of that, they went to Junes.

Today was one of those days where Junes was Souji’s first choice.

Yosuke was working that day, which was equal parts lame and fantastic. Souji wasn’t particularly fond of chatting with any of these country folk that happened to talk to him first—although he was more talkative than most city dwellers—but it was the best way to pass the time while waiting for Yosuke to take a break. And when Yosuke finally did take a break, it was fun to hang out with him.

It was  _ always  _ fun to hang out with Yosuke. He was funny and charismatic, and watching him get fired up about literally anything always managed to make Souji a little more motivated, too. Whether it was something as big as trying to find whoever was killing all of these people in Inaba or as small as trying to mop the floor fast enough so he could clock out on an even number, Yosuke always got a certain fire in his eyes that had Souji feeling all sorts of ways.

It was particularly hot and sunny that day, which meant Junes would essentially be devoid of teenagers until later that evening. Most people went swimming on these sorts of days, and honestly, that’s what Souji would have done, too. It was what the others were doing, anyway, but he had decided to pass on that one after hearing how thoroughly upset Yosuke had sounded at the fact that he wouldn’t be able to join. Souji couldn’t just leave him behind like that!

(None of them would be able to hear the end of it if he had, anyway. They’d have to spend at least the next three meet-ups with Yosuke bringing up “that one time  _ everyone  _ went swimming and left me to die at Junes.”)

Souji sat at a rather small table in the Junes food court, having gotten caught peeking at Yosuke from around one of the shelves. Really, Souji had been following Yosuke for a lot longer than the ten minutes Yosuke caught him for, but where was the fun in admitting to that? He’d even gotten Chie and Yukiko in on that game. Chie was considerably better than Yukiko was at following Yosuke around, but she still needed to control her remarks about the lame dance moves Yosuke liked to try whenever he thought he was alone. At least Souji could  _ silently  _ laugh.

So it’d be better to just wait for Yosuke now. Even if he hadn’t caught on that Souji had been following him for a really long time (thirty-two minutes at this point—the longest Souji had cared to do it, and the only time he’d been caught), if he was spotted again, the whole game would be over!

And Souji might die if his game was ruined. It really was one of the highlights of a long summer day stuck in one place, and besides… Besides, Yosuke was pretty cute. It wasn’t like Souji could deny something like that. 

Thankfully, it wasn’t very long before Yosuke was able to join him. Souji wasn’t exactly sure how Yosuke thought he looked less like a Junes employee without the apron, considering his shirt had the Junes logo plastered all over the front and he still had his name tag on, but he seemed to be officially done with work for the day. He had three apples in his arms, and he plopped down on the chair across from Souji.

“Hey,” he said, “I couldn’t grab any candy samples, but do you wanna see something cool?”

Now  _ that  _ was a statement sure to pique Souji’s interest. Especially when it involved three apples. He nodded, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

“Okay, so I was kinda figuring out how to do it while I was restocking today,” Yosuke explained, taking two apples in one hand and one in the other. “And I think I got it down for real. But you have to be the first one to see it! I don’t wanna make a fool out of myself in front of someone I don’t really trust. I mean, I trust Teddie, but I feel like if I mess up, he’ll just tell everyone! Do you even know how hard it is to keep something from someone who  _ lives  _ with you?!”

Souji blinked. “I think I have an idea. Anyway, show me what you got. I promise I won’t laugh at you if you’re a bad juggler.”

Yosuke visibly relaxed at that. “Thank God. Wait!” He leaned forward a bit, narrowing his eyes at Souji. “How did you know I was gonna juggle?”

Souji raised an eyebrow. “Lucky guess?”

But really, what  _ else  _ would Yosuke be doing with that many apples?

Yosuke seemed to buy it, though, and began his juggling after a few deep breaths to focus. He was surprisingly good at it, especially if he really had only picked it up earlier that day. It looked like he wanted to be looking at Souji while he did it, but he kept glancing between his hands and somewhere just over Souji’s head.

“Okay, now hold out your hand!” Yosuke said, but he tossed one of the apples at Souji without giving him much time to prepare.

Thankfully, Souji’s reflexes were quick enough to catch it before it hit him square in the face. It probably had something to do with all the work they did in the TV world, but either way, it was a pretty lucky catch.

“That one’s on me! It’s a special deal for  _ anyone  _ who’s best friends with a Junes employee.” Yosuke caught the other two apples in each hand, setting them both down on the table. “If you watch him juggle without laughing, then you get a free apple. It’s quite the steal, right?”

Souji nodded, inspecting the apple. It had a few nicks in it. Souji could easily picture Yosuke in the produce section, trying again and again to successfully juggle these apples and dropping them every single time. It was… a bit of a cute mental image, honestly. “An incredible deal.”

“Dude, you were supposed to laugh at  _ that!”  _ Yosuke said. “Well, whatever. What’d you get up to today?”

Souji had to think fast—he couldn’t give away the game so quickly! He’d take the Follow Yosuke Game to the grave with him if he had to; the only way he’d let it slip is if it was purely an accident! It’d be best to change the subject… 

Oh, he could just do what he did with Nanako whenever she asked too many questions.

“Wanna see a magic trick?” Souji asked, plucking a napkin from the dispenser and placing it on his lap.

_ That _ seemed to distract Yosuke well enough, considering how excitedly he cried, “‘Course I do! Show me what you got!”

Somehow, Yosuke seemed way more excited about it than Nanako had been.

Still, Souji got to work on his trick. It wasn’t too difficult—Souji only learned the easy ones when he was bored—but he thought it was pretty impressive nonetheless. Nanako had certainly lost her mind over it! She  _ begged  _ Souji to tell her how he did it, and as much as Souji wanted to grant her the entire world’s secrets, he wanted her to hold onto to her wonder for just a little longer.

He started by placing a coin on the table. “Hey, pass me that salt shaker. It’s really important for the magic to work, y’know? Because salt is…”

“Oh, right! Salt’s, like, super important for getting rid of evil and stuff,” Yosuke filled in, which was a little different than what Nanako said about salt. Nanako had said it got rid of the bad taste of things instead of evil spirits.

Souji set the salt shaker on top of the coin, unfolding a paper napkin from the dispenser. “Exactly. Since the salt gets rid of evil, it’ll get rid of this evil coin. I picked it up in the TV world, so I’m sure it’s got bad energy on it.”

Yosuke nodded, watching at Souji carefully placed the napkin over top of the salt shaker. If all went according to plan, Yosuke would probably be as baffled as Nanako was, if not more. So Souji took extra time waving his hands around the covered-up salt shaker, not quite feeling bold enough to utter any magic words. Quicker than a blink, Souji snatched up the salt shaker.

The coin, however, remained on the table.

Yosuke burst into laughter. “Man, that’s lame! I thought you were gonna show me a real trick!”

Souji sighed, setting the salt shaker back on the table. “Sorry. You’re right. It was  _ super  _ lame. I can’t ever get it right!”

With that, he brought his hand down and smashed the salt shaker completely flat.

...Or at least it  _ looked  _ like he did. Paper napkins were excellent at keeping shape, even when there was nothing underneath them. The salt shaker really sat safely in Souji’s lap, having been dropped there when he revealed the coin, but there was no way for Yosuke to know that.

Yosuke, by the way, was sitting in stunned silence.

“Dude, what the hell?!” Yosuke’s eyes were wide, and he gripped the edge of the table. “Where’d it go?! That’s, like, a whole ass salt shaker. Where did you put it?!”

Souji smirked, keeping Yosuke’s eyes on his as he spoke. “I whisked it away. You’ll  _ never  _ see it again.”

As Yosuke tried to guess where on  _ Earth _ the salt shaker went, Souji was slowly slipping it into his bag. He had not a clue about how he was going to get it back on the table, or even what he was going to  _ do  _ with it, but he was sure he’d figure it out.

Right now, Souji was more occupied entertaining Yosuke’s (super cute) interrogation.

  
  


So he took the salt shaker home.

Souji really didn’t intend for that to be where the salt shaker ended up, but there wasn’t a moment he had away from Yosuke where he could discreetly put it anywhere, so home with him it went. It sat on his table now, a reminder to somehow figure out how to bring it back.

It wouldn’t be so hard if Souji wasn’t so  _ popular. _ Which, in hindsight, seemed like an extremely conceited thing to say, but it was true! Souji hardly had a moment to go anywhere by himself, it seemed. His friends were always tagging along, and while he did appreciate it, he just needed ten minutes where he could run into Junes, drop off the salt shaker, and leave without anyone noticing.

He probably could go with someone, but he also didn’t want to be questioned about why he had a salt shaker in his bag. He’d probably end up explaining it with enough pressing, anyway, and he wasn’t willing to give out his perfect trick so easily.

But eventually, the day came where no one was hounding him to hang out, and while it was an odd feeling, he was glad to finally get rid of that damn salt shaker. It was weird enough when Dojima asked him about it and he couldn’t come up with an answer. Dojima had looked at him  _ so  _ strangely, but left the topic alone. He  _ did _ get some odd looks throughout the next two days, though.

Yeah, Souji didn’t want to go through something like that again.

It was a pretty overcast day, which kept most people inside. Everyone was  _ convinced  _ that it’d rain immediately upon stepping outside, so it was easier to just stay in. And that worked wonderfully for Souji. Empty streets, empty phone log, and empty Junes.

He walked in with a plan: go directly to the food court, don’t make eye contact with anyone, set the salt shaker down, and leave as quickly and as casually as possible. If he could just do that, he’d be rid of the salt shaker, and his debt to this store would be completely paid off.

...Well, it wasn’t  _ that  _ serious, but it  _ felt  _ that serious in a town with as little to do as Inaba.

He executed the first parts of his plan fairly well. It wasn’t much different than getting around different places in the TV world. The TV world was probably  _ more  _ difficult than this was. In the TV, he only had to worry about shadows. In Junes, he had to worry about Miss Takagaki from two roads over who couldn’t reach the top shelf, Teddie who couldn’t keep his mouth shut about  _ anything, _ and most importantly, Yosuke. Who was Yosuke.

He had to suppress the urge to run towards a table as soon as he saw it was empty. At this point, it didn’t even matter if it was the right table. Any table would do as long as it was in the Junes food court, and surely the table wouldn’t try to run away from him, so it was better to walk at a perfectly reasonable pace in order to draw as little attention to himself as possible.

(All this over a salt shaker… That trick was most definitely best performed at home, where all he had to do was keep it in his pocket until Nanako went to bed. Why didn’t he just drop it on the ground? Why didn’t he just reveal to Yosuke where it had gone? Why did he feel so compelled to keep the illusion up?)

His hand was in his bag, fingers closed around the salt shaker, just as he approached the table. If he could just do it quickly enough—

“Hey, man!”

Yosuke’s voice was closer than Souji really needed it to be, and he wasn’t sure  _ how  _ he didn’t hear Yosuke coming. But now he had to think fast, and really he was moving faster than he could think, because all he could think of when he heard Yosuke’s voice was that  _ damn  _ look in his eyes, and he was kissing Yosuke in the middle of the Junes food court before he could even process that he still needed to put the salt shaker back on the table.

It was sometime after the shock from the kiss melted away and before they pulled away from each other that the salt shaker made it back to its rightful place. Souji wasn’t sure how exactly he managed to function well enough to put it back with his head spinning at approximately six hundred and sixty-four kilometers a second, but he felt the whiplash as soon as they were disconnected.

Yosuke looked more confused than anything. Which was good. Souji had… actually been wanting to do that for a long time, and  _ confused  _ was better than  _ mad.  _ Confused meant that, should Yosuke choose to, their friendship would slowly dwindle into being completely snuffed out. Mad was always a cut-off quicker than blinking, and going from everything to nothing that quickly always hurt more.

“Uh,” Yosuke said, refusing to make eye contact, “I gotta think about that.”

Souji nodded. “Fair enough.”

At least he was rid of that damn salt shaker.

  
  


Summer was fading when Souji finally heard from Yosuke again.

Souji really had been beginning to think that Yosuke had disappeared forever at that point, only living on in other people’s conversations and in stolen glances whenever Souji took Nanako to Junes. She’d always,  _ always  _ ask if they could stop to talk to Yosuke, and Souji always,  _ always  _ had to usher her away, insisting that Yosuke seemed busy even if he was just trying to look so.

The days were so exceptionally dull without being able to talk to Yosuke. Souji didn’t realize how much they talked until they couldn’t talk at all, and even just the lack of occasional text messages throughout the day felt like an entire chunk of Souji’s life was missing.

It was one of the last evenings of summer vacation when they finally saw each other again. Souji was leaning against the railing, on that secret spot Yosuke had showed him where  _ everything  _ in Inaba was visible. Reds and oranges were melting into a warm purple that would eventually cool down into a blue so dark it’d be black. One pinpoint of white light had already poked through the color, and Souji was sure the rest were soon to follow. He’d never really got to see as many back in the city.

Yosuke was once again a surprise, voice startling Souji out of thinking so much about the stars.

“Didn’t think I’d see you here,” Yosuke said. “How’s it going?”

Now  _ that  _ was a loaded question. Was Souji supposed to lie? Tell Yosuke that everything had been going absolutely fine? Was he supposed to tell the truth? Pour his heart out about how nothing felt the same anymore, and he wasn’t sure if it’d be for the better or for worse?

Yosuke kept talking before Souji could figure out a proper response. “Sorry, that was a stupid question. Um…”

Out of the corner of his eye, Souji could see just how nervous Yosuke was. He shook his head, adjusted the headphones around his neck, rocked back and forth on his heels. Souji turned his head to look at him fully, but Yosuke was staring directly in front of him.

“Why?” Yosuke asked, finally. “Why’d you do that? I’ve been trying to figure out lots of things over the past couple of weeks, and I think I’ve got mostly everything sorted out, and that’s a long story filled with too many conversations with Teddie and Nanako to even talk about right now. Yeah,  _ Nanako.  _ I looked to a seven-year-old for help with my identity crisis. Do you even know how often she’s in Junes? I think that shows how it’s been going with me—Okay, no, answer my question. It’s the only thing I haven’t figured out yet.”

Souji laughed at that, the tension slowly slipping from his shoulders. It made Yosuke laugh a little, too. “It’s dumb. It’s a dumb reason. Are you sure you want to know?”

“I’m telling you it’s the only thing I’ve wanted to know for a little while now. I don’t care how stupid it is.”

“Remember when I showed you that trick with the salt shaker?” Souji asked.

He ended up explaining every last detail about the whereabouts of the salt shaker to how he could look Dojima in the eye for two days because of whatever Dojima thought he was doing with it. He talked about how he couldn’t figure out how to put it back for the longest time, and how he always ended up thinking about Yosuke’s eyes, and how he really didn’t know how else to not get caught putting the salt shaker back.

“So I kissed you,” Souji said, “both because I needed to distract you, but also because I wanted to. Because I’ve been wanting to for a while. That’s my dumb reason.”

This time, Yosuke was quick to respond.

_ “That’s  _ it?!”

He was finally looking at Souji, but he looked  _ relieved.  _ Like he was expecting an answer that was anything but Souji just wanting to kiss him. What other reason could Souji have? What other reason could Yosuke had thought of?

“Man, that’s a lot better than what me and Teddie came up with,” Yosuke said, “and I said I’d only not go for it if it was something like what we thought of. So I guess we can go for it. That’s cool. I didn’t think I’d get this far.”

For some reason, Souji felt like he didn’t at all want to know what Yosuke and Teddie had come up with. Those were two minds that could be rather catastrophic put together, and their reason probably didn’t make much sense anyway.

“I didn’t think you’d talk to me again.” Souji stood up straight, glad that the comfortable atmosphere Yosuke usually brought along with him had returned.

“Of course I’d talk to you again! You’re my best friend!” Yosuke shook his head. “Wow, you’re kinda ridiculous.”

Souji tilted his head. “So you don’t talk to me for three weeks and then call  _ me  _ the ridiculous one for thinking it was over, but you can theorize about my motives with a bear thing that turned into a human, and that’s not ridiculous?”

Yosuke’s cheeks turned pink, but he didn’t avert his gaze this time. “Duh. Of course it’s not ridiculous. Everyone talks to Teddie. It’d be ridiculous if only I talked to him.”

Souji laughed, rolling his eyes, and soon, Yosuke was laughing, too. Evening finally dropped into night, and even the blinding street lights (newly put in, after decades of not being there) didn’t dim the starlight. They stood there for a little while longer before walking back into town together, a route that either of them could walk in their sleep. They made a mistake this time, though. Instead of splitting up at the fork in the road, Souji walked Yosuke all the way home.

Trying it. Right, they’d be trying it now, and hopefully there wouldn’t be any other salt shakers getting in the way of things.

Souji had other tricks up his sleeves, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this before i was even done with p4, BUT I HOPE YOU ENJOYED NONETHELESS
> 
> my twitter is mostly idols but [here it is anyway](https://twitter.com/mezzosaka)


End file.
